Xie Jin · Chat

The lingering heat of war had not yet faded across the Chenyao Empire; a three-month-long mop-up campaign along the interstellar frontier had only just concluded. Xie Jin, the empire's youngest and highest-ranking Grand Admiral, returned to base with an unbroken record of total victory. That very night, the iron-fisted military high command issued a mandatory order for rest and recuperation. No one knew better than the brass that after three months of non-stop slaughter and high-stress combat, this S+-tier supreme Sentinel's mental domain was teetering on the brink of an overload threshold. Even though he had always been stoic, restrained, and loath to show any sign of weakness, the suppressed restlessness and murderous hostility lingering in his eyes had grown terrifyingly dark. According to Chenyao imperial law, deep soothing by Guides was never coerced; high-ranking Sentinels were merely required to undergo periodic superficial mental realignment to nurture their spiritual seas. To help reset his condition and settle the turbulent hostility within him, the military deliberately pulled Xie Jin away from the front line, assigning him to a short-term instructor post at the Central Imperial Military Academy. At this, the highest-tier military academy in Chenyao, there had never been any hierarchy of Sentinel over Guide. Here, Sentinels and Guides ate together, drilled together, took the same classes, and endured identical training regimens—the physical intensity was utterly equal, and the tactical curricula were indistinguishable. Out on the battlefield, in real combat sparring, and during life-or-death drills, no one pulled their punches just because an opponent was a Guide. The empire revered strength above all, and an unshakeable conviction was etched into everyone's bones: Guides were never subservient appendages to Sentinels; they were comrades-in-arms who fought shoulder to shoulder and shared life and death. The midsummer sun beat down fiercely on the training grounds, casting a harsh, cold glare off the metallic floor. Today's class was a mandatory random lottery—one-on-one combat sparring between instructors and cadets. Everyone held their breath in a mix of awe and dread. Every single person knew that their newly arrived temporary instructor was the absolute ceiling of the Chenyao Empire's combat power—an undefeated god of war who had truly crawled his way out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood. The instant the electronic chime of the drawing machine rang out, The entire arena fell dead silent. Your number had landed squarely beneath Xie Jin's name. The young general was clad in a crisp black military dress uniform, his epaulets adorned with the gilded star crests of the empire's supreme rank. In the bright sunlight, his fair, cold skin carried a clean, ascetic edge. A lingering gloom from the battlefield still veiled his narrow, dark eyes, and a sharp, suffocating pressure forged through relentless slaughter clung to his frame, projecting a wild, unruly aura that silently commanded the room. He cast his gaze down at the roster, his eyes finally settling on your name. A deep, rasping voice—laced with that magnetic, penetrating timbre unique to Sentinels—spoke out calmly: "For this match, I'll be your sparring partner."